The Practical Science of Data Center Capacity Planning

Your data center is growing, you have more users connecting, and your business continues to evolve. As the modern organization places more demands around the data center model, administrators must be aware of their resources and their utilization. A big part of that is planning out capacity for both today, and the future.

As the need to balance current and future IT requirements against resource consumption becomes more urgent, the data center industry increasingly views capacity planning as a way of achieving a critical component to planning a new build or retrofit. Data center capacity planning can be a complex undertaking with far-reaching strategic and operational implications.

DCD Intelligence and Server Technology have put together this white paper to share some industry insights and lessons on the practical steps that are needed to develop a successful power and capacity planning strategy.

As the paper outlines, there are several common factors that may impact capacity planning. Those factors include:

Industry specific › Rack density and optimization requirements

Power

Cooling

Plan for business continuity and disaster recovery

Sustainability and ‘green’ performance

Budgeting

Through it all, you need to apply the practical science of capacity planning to really create a powerful data center model. Key emerging industry trends toward Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) and Software Defined Data Centers (SDDC) demonstrate a continuing need to look at the key balance between IT and communications and facilities management.

Capacity planning brings together all the key resource and output factors that constitute a data center’s reason for commission and its means of fulfilling that. As critical resources become more expensive or scarce, being able to plan for future capacity requirements becomes more critical.

Download this whitepaper today to learn how the power draw of IT and communications equipment will continue to rise, creating exponential demand for the power needed to run and cool it, while the cost of power increases and its ready availability is threatened.

About the Author

Bill Kleyman is a veteran, enthusiastic technologist with experience in data center design, management and deployment. His architecture work includes virtualization and cloud deployments as well as business network design and implementation. Currently, Bill works as the Vice President of Strategy and Innovation at MTM Technologies, a Stamford, CT based consulting firm.

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